At Least He Didn't Say, 'Read My Lips'
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
Remember this?
"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."[[In-content Ad]]President Obama said that during the campaign. He also said, "under my plan, 95 percent of working families get a tax cut."
Of course, that was then, this is now.
(I just hope President Obama gets as much criticism as President George H. W. Bush did over his now infamous, "Read my lips. No new taxes." It would only be fair.)
On the topic of "any form of tax increase" let's talk about a town meeting that President Obama held this week.
In it, he said he would not rule out a tax on employer-provided health care benefits to fund his health care plan.
OK, now wait a minute here. I seem to remember a candidate Obama vilifying a candidate McCain for the very same thing.
Obama's campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on ads skewering McCain's supposedly reckless idea.
Here are relevant quotes from the ads. You remember, "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message."
"On health care, John McCain promises a tax credit. But here's what he won't tell you. McCain would impose a new tax on health benefits. Taxing your health care for the first time ever. It's a multi-trillion tax hike. The largest middle-class tax increase in history. You won't find one word about it on his Web site, but the McCain tax could cost your family thousands. Can you afford it?"
In October, Obama called McCain's proposal to tax health care benefits, "so radical, so out of touch with what you're facing, and so out of line with our basic values."
Frankly, I wasn't a fan of McCain's plan either. I agreed with candidate Obama. Taxing health care benefits is a dumb idea.
Here's why.
Most workers who have employer-provided health insurance pay a portion of their health care premiums and the employer pays the rest.
The government's going to increase how much employees have to pay for their health care, while at the same time offering a government plan for the uninsured.
Workers are going to do the math. My guess is it will save many workers money to dump their employer-provided health insurance and go with the government plan.
Of course, that reduces the amount of revenue being siphoned out of the private sector to fund government health insurance. It's self-defeating.
(It's like taxing cigarettes to fund health care and then encouraging everyone to quit smoking.)
According to the Congressional Budget Office, taxing health benefits mean $246 billion in additional revenue for a single year.
So despite being totally and unequivocally against taxing health care benefits during the campaign, President Obama - apparently desperate for revenue - is considering doing just that.
Now let's talk about cap and trade.
The energy bill President Obama and Democrats pushed through the House a week ago Friday is a 1,500-page abomination. One can only hope it dies in the Senate or at least gets watered down to the point where it won't bury what's left of the economy.
"Cap" is a legal limit on the quantity of greenhouse gases that a region can emit each year. "Trade" means that companies may swap among themselves or buy from the government the permission - permits - to emit greenhouse gases.
Basically, a monstrous new government bureaucracy will create a vast new source of revenue - the right to emit carbon. Then the government sells that right to those who need it - mainly utility companies and manufacturers. The government is supposed to use the money to fund "green" energy programs to get us away from burning fossil fuel for energy.
Politicians love cap and trade because they can say they're taxing "polluters."
Not so much.
Once the government mandates that manufacturers and utility companies have to pay to emit carbon, who do you suppose really pays?
Uh-huh, you know.
According to an analysis in the Wall Street Journal, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that price hikes from a 15 percent cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3 percent of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output.
The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9 percent to 2.7 percent of income. The rich would pay 1.7 percent.
Hit hardest by this new tax would be the "95 percent of working families" President Obama likes to talk about helping.
But the most egregious part of cap and trade is geographic. It punishes parts of the country that rely most on manufacturing and fossil fuels - mostly coal. That's us, along with Southern and Plains states.
The Energy Information Administration says 25 states get more than 50 percent of their electricity from coal. Ratepayers in Indiana - where we get 94 percent of energy from coal - will get hammered by this bill as utilities pass along the carbon-emitting tax they have to pay the government.
Manufacturers paying the cap and trade tax will pass along the costs to consumers.
The WSJ analysis says cap and trade "takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street 'green tech' investors who know how to leverage the political class."
No wonder California Demos like Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi were so enamored of the plan. And no wonder Demos like Marcy Kaptur of Ohio had to be bribed to vote for it.
Waxman, House Energy and Commerce chairman, stuffed a new $3.5 billion federal power authority for Kaptur's Ohio into the cap and trade bill at 3 a.m., just hours before the bill was to be debated on the House floor. It was part of a 310-page amendment crammed full of other vote-getting provisions sought by dozens of wavering Democrats. Waxman got the votes he needed, including Kaptur's. The measure narrowly passed 219-212.
Even worse than all of the above is the fact that the plan probably won't even work. It's been tried in Europe and has so far accomplished virtually nothing.
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that everything the bill purports about climate change is true. Further, let's assume the bill's proposals would work flawlessly and achieve or exceed its carbon reduction targets. Even then, plenty of experts note that the impact of holding down an increase in world temperatures by the end of this century would still be virtually unnoticeable.
And economists - guys like William Nordhaus of Yale - are afraid cap and trade will cost trillions more to implement than the worth of any climate damage it could prevent.
Good plan, eh?
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Remember this?
"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."[[In-content Ad]]President Obama said that during the campaign. He also said, "under my plan, 95 percent of working families get a tax cut."
Of course, that was then, this is now.
(I just hope President Obama gets as much criticism as President George H. W. Bush did over his now infamous, "Read my lips. No new taxes." It would only be fair.)
On the topic of "any form of tax increase" let's talk about a town meeting that President Obama held this week.
In it, he said he would not rule out a tax on employer-provided health care benefits to fund his health care plan.
OK, now wait a minute here. I seem to remember a candidate Obama vilifying a candidate McCain for the very same thing.
Obama's campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on ads skewering McCain's supposedly reckless idea.
Here are relevant quotes from the ads. You remember, "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message."
"On health care, John McCain promises a tax credit. But here's what he won't tell you. McCain would impose a new tax on health benefits. Taxing your health care for the first time ever. It's a multi-trillion tax hike. The largest middle-class tax increase in history. You won't find one word about it on his Web site, but the McCain tax could cost your family thousands. Can you afford it?"
In October, Obama called McCain's proposal to tax health care benefits, "so radical, so out of touch with what you're facing, and so out of line with our basic values."
Frankly, I wasn't a fan of McCain's plan either. I agreed with candidate Obama. Taxing health care benefits is a dumb idea.
Here's why.
Most workers who have employer-provided health insurance pay a portion of their health care premiums and the employer pays the rest.
The government's going to increase how much employees have to pay for their health care, while at the same time offering a government plan for the uninsured.
Workers are going to do the math. My guess is it will save many workers money to dump their employer-provided health insurance and go with the government plan.
Of course, that reduces the amount of revenue being siphoned out of the private sector to fund government health insurance. It's self-defeating.
(It's like taxing cigarettes to fund health care and then encouraging everyone to quit smoking.)
According to the Congressional Budget Office, taxing health benefits mean $246 billion in additional revenue for a single year.
So despite being totally and unequivocally against taxing health care benefits during the campaign, President Obama - apparently desperate for revenue - is considering doing just that.
Now let's talk about cap and trade.
The energy bill President Obama and Democrats pushed through the House a week ago Friday is a 1,500-page abomination. One can only hope it dies in the Senate or at least gets watered down to the point where it won't bury what's left of the economy.
"Cap" is a legal limit on the quantity of greenhouse gases that a region can emit each year. "Trade" means that companies may swap among themselves or buy from the government the permission - permits - to emit greenhouse gases.
Basically, a monstrous new government bureaucracy will create a vast new source of revenue - the right to emit carbon. Then the government sells that right to those who need it - mainly utility companies and manufacturers. The government is supposed to use the money to fund "green" energy programs to get us away from burning fossil fuel for energy.
Politicians love cap and trade because they can say they're taxing "polluters."
Not so much.
Once the government mandates that manufacturers and utility companies have to pay to emit carbon, who do you suppose really pays?
Uh-huh, you know.
According to an analysis in the Wall Street Journal, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that price hikes from a 15 percent cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3 percent of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output.
The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9 percent to 2.7 percent of income. The rich would pay 1.7 percent.
Hit hardest by this new tax would be the "95 percent of working families" President Obama likes to talk about helping.
But the most egregious part of cap and trade is geographic. It punishes parts of the country that rely most on manufacturing and fossil fuels - mostly coal. That's us, along with Southern and Plains states.
The Energy Information Administration says 25 states get more than 50 percent of their electricity from coal. Ratepayers in Indiana - where we get 94 percent of energy from coal - will get hammered by this bill as utilities pass along the carbon-emitting tax they have to pay the government.
Manufacturers paying the cap and trade tax will pass along the costs to consumers.
The WSJ analysis says cap and trade "takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street 'green tech' investors who know how to leverage the political class."
No wonder California Demos like Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi were so enamored of the plan. And no wonder Demos like Marcy Kaptur of Ohio had to be bribed to vote for it.
Waxman, House Energy and Commerce chairman, stuffed a new $3.5 billion federal power authority for Kaptur's Ohio into the cap and trade bill at 3 a.m., just hours before the bill was to be debated on the House floor. It was part of a 310-page amendment crammed full of other vote-getting provisions sought by dozens of wavering Democrats. Waxman got the votes he needed, including Kaptur's. The measure narrowly passed 219-212.
Even worse than all of the above is the fact that the plan probably won't even work. It's been tried in Europe and has so far accomplished virtually nothing.
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that everything the bill purports about climate change is true. Further, let's assume the bill's proposals would work flawlessly and achieve or exceed its carbon reduction targets. Even then, plenty of experts note that the impact of holding down an increase in world temperatures by the end of this century would still be virtually unnoticeable.
And economists - guys like William Nordhaus of Yale - are afraid cap and trade will cost trillions more to implement than the worth of any climate damage it could prevent.
Good plan, eh?
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